Tea Party Patriots

Tea Party Patriots (TPP) is a conservative group initially organized by Freedomworks, which was responsible for organizing the anti-healthcare reform town hall mobs that occurred during the congressional recess period in August, 2009. TPP purportedly organized the anti-government, anti-tax rallies that occurred in April, 2009, but apparently Freedomworks was responsible for organizing these protests as well. After FreedomWorks orchestrated the original "Tea Party protests" in April of 2009, it supposedly handed over the reins of the movement to a group named the "Tea Party Patriots," but Rolling Stone magazine reports that internal correspondence from TPP's private listserv made it clear that FreedomWorks was still directing the Tea Party Patriots' activities. In June, 2009, after activists on the TPP list-serve began advocating to change the Tea Party logo, a top official from FreedomWorks stepped in and shut down the discussion. "I talked to everyone here," wrote Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, "and there was consensus that we will keep the logo."

TPP consists of a website (http://teapartypatriots.org), the ownership of which is masked by ProtectPrivacy, located in the Netherlands. There is no "about", "staff", "directors" or other information identifying any individual as responsible for any part of the website, listed as a 501(c)(4) organization on the homepage.

Tea Party Patriots avail themselves of free website services from ning.com (teapartypatriots.ning.com), where Bob MacGuffie's page (teapartypatriots.ning.com/profile/BobMacGuffie), connects the TPP with the writer of the activist-disrupter "Rocking the Town Hall" memo composed by MacGuffie. TPP is listed as co-sponsor of The 912 Project (912dc.org March on Washington, September 12, 2009).

A person identified as "Key Note Speaker, Mark Meckler, national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots" talked at the launch of the Tea Party Express bus tour.

The Facebook page reports Tea Party Patriots National Coordinators, Amy Kremer, Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler. Ironically, despite the heavy support of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and other MSM properties, they use Facebook instead of Murdoch's MySpace.com.

Another Facebook page offers this list of National Coordinators and associates them with The 912 Project.

Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Team

 * Amy Kremer (amykremer@gmail.com; amykremer on gchat, 678.495.8271)
 * Jenny Beth Martin (jennybethm@gmail.com; jennybethm on gchat, 404.326.0936)
 * Mark Meckler (mark@teapartypatriots.org, mark.grassroots on gchat)
 * Rob Neppell (rob@teapartypatriots.org)

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.gov), the trademark was filed on July 9, 2009, by "Tea Party Patriots, Inc. CORPORATION GEORGIA Ste. 620-322 1025 Rose Creek Dr. Woodstock GEORGIA 30189." This is apparently as close to "official" headquarters as it is possible to identify.

According to TPMMuckraker: "FreedomWorks Says Jump, Tea Partiers Ask How High. ... But the discussion was soon cut short by Amy Kremer, the Tea Party Patriot national coordinator ... told the group: "Hey All, Not to be a pain, but this is not Tea Party Patriots logo' to change. This is FreedomWorks logo and they have said they are keeping the original design."''

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Freedomworks
 * Tea Party Express
 * Tea Party movement funding

External articles

 * Tim Dickinson, The Lie Machine, Rolling Stone magazine, September 23, 2009.
 * Jonathan Raban, At the Tea Party, New York Review of Books, March 25, 2010
 * Jane Mayer, Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama, The New Yorker, August 30, 2010